


Nothing Worth Knowing Can be Taught*

by Addisonia



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff for grownups (versus adults) (inasmuch as we're grownups), Happy ending (that's legal too), Housemaster!Lestrade, Human AU, Kissing, M/M, Not!Hogwarts, Pupil!Mycroft, Sweet but not cloying, mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 10:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3932788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Addisonia/pseuds/Addisonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Human AU. Mycroft wants to apply to Cambridge early, but Housemaster Lestrade thinks he's too young.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Worth Knowing Can be Taught*

**Author's Note:**

> * (Title) from Oscar Wilde

“Enter.” On seeing young Mycroft Holmes at the door, I smiled and put aside the essays I was marking. “Come in, Holmes, come in.”

Rounding my desk, I indicated the time-softened leather armchairs, which we’d occupied so often, by the fireplace. The blaze kept an autumnal chill in my rooms at bay with crackling heat and cheer.

“This isn’t a social call, sir.” My smile faltered at the serious expression hinting at the formidable adult Holmes would become. “I’ve spoken with the headmaster.”

“I see.” Already? My stomach churned. “Perhaps we should discuss this over tea.”

“No, sir.”

The kitchen was hardly big enough to prepare the formal teas housemasters gave in their rooms to small groups of boys, but reaching the kettle now was my only mission. I needed a cup, a prop, to help me through this. I needed something to settle my insides.

“Mr Lestrade, please."

He caught my arm as I passed him, and I swung around to stare at him; it was unheard of for boys to touch masters except in the most extenuating circumstances. For Mycroft Holmes, of all pupils, to step over this line was startling. His blue eyes echoed the tempestuous greys of the English Channel not five miles away, as they always did when he was under stress. Then he looked down, his fine ginger hair falling forwards with gravity, and he snatched his hand away.

“I feel sure I’ve misunderstood,” he looked up at me again, “but sir, Headmaster tells me you’re responsible for halting my application to Churchill.”

The churning inside me gave way to slight nausea, and I chose my words with care.

“I had to consider your whole well-being.” Of course I’d derailed his application to Cambridge. He was much too young to leave here. Maybe not intellectually, nor even emotionally, really, but _chronologically_ at the very least. “I’m your housemaster. It’s my job."

He swallowed. “No, sir. As far as I’m concerned, it isn’t. Not anymore.”

Cold swept through me. “Pardon?”

He had all but curbed the flailing limbs of his youth, and his body language now was serene, betrayed by no more than a bent head, a huffed exhalation. “I don’t want you as my housemaster. I don’t want you to be responsible for me in any way.”

“Holmes!” In all my considerations about whether or not to support his application, it had never occurred to me that, if I didn’t, something between us might break. He, the youngest pupil, and I, the youngest master, had bonded from the first day he arrived at Seaville Preparatory School for Boys five years ago. I softened my voice. “You’ll still be the youngest one to apply for a place at Churchill a year from now. Would it hurt to wait?”

“And do what?”

Ah, well, that was the question, given that he’d already completed all university entrance requirements, and more. Still, this was too soon. “For God’s sake, you’re only fifteen.”

“I’ll be sixteen in August.”

“You don’t make friends. You’ll be alone.”

“That’s how I prefer it, It’s how I’ve always been.” My gaze skittered about the room. “Sir, I’ve done all I can here.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Somehow I thought—I hoped—he’d treasure one more year here as much as I would. With a lighter workload, we could spend a bit more time together, and I could prepare him properly for the big wide world, before he launched himself into what I had no doubt would be an illustrious career … leaving me behind. As all pupils did.

Stupid of me. He was ravenous for a seven-course dinner, and he’d stripped everything of substance from our larders. All we had left to offer him was a cream tea. He was mentally starving to death here, and I had nothing left to give him; I was holding him back.

“Sir, I’ll be sixteen next August.”

“Yes. You said before.” My frustration leant a snap to my tone.

He barely shifted, but in that instant he took on a dignified poise that I could envy. Only a flutter around his eyes hinted it might be a mask.

“I’ll be sixteen in August.” He took a deep breath and locked eyes with me. “Greg.”

The arresting shock of hearing my christian name on a pupil’s lips was edged out by the exhilaration of hearing it from Holmes. Then I was overwhelmed by a sudden realization that made my heart pump fast and loud. No more than a whisper of air crossed my vocal cords.

“You can’t mean it.”

His eyelids wavered and fell, his lips tightened and a flush rose up his face. “I’m sorry. I-I think I’ve made a mistake—”

“No, stop.” This time I caught his arm as he tried to rush past. “I just meant there’s … We’re … I may be the youngest housemaster in Seaville history, but I’m still fifteen years your senior, Holmes. You can’t want … How can you want this?”

His quizzical look made me wonder whether perhaps I was the one who’d made a mistake. Maybe he wasn’t alluding to sixteen as the age of consent. I started to pull away, but he grasped my hand and tightened his grip. “Mr Lestrade. Greg.”

I had to know. “Do you—That is to say, you don’t want me as your housemaster anymore because you,” I licked my lips, “because—”

He exhaled. “Because I want you.”

A weak gasp of laughter escaped me and our school robes entangled in a hug before I could think better of it. I still had a couple of inches on him, though doubtless another growth spurt lay ahead of him, and as I leant my weight against him his spine bent back, pushing his hips closer. My eyes closed and I relished the feel of him in my arms, his warm breath against my neck.

Melancholy had been seeping into my life over the past few months, turning the most rewarding phase of my life so far, teaching and raising these boys, into something drab and lacklustre. I didn’t know, I didn’t recognize that it was tied to the future absence of Mycroft Holmes. What colour was left in my days had drained away the moment Headmaster sent me Holmes’ Cambridge application, an application that represented the boy’s exit from Seaville and one, what’s more, that he hadn’t discussed with me first. As hard as I tried to claw him back into the fold for a little longer, his escape was foregone.

I never imagined that this new development could be a possibility. I never dreamt that, while I was dispiritedly looking around for alternatives to being left behind at Seaville, Holmes was hatching a plot to make a future for us together viable.

But still. Viable was no guarantee.

I swallowed and pulled away, clearing my throat. “You realize when you’re in the prime of your career at forty-five, I’ll be sixty and looking retirement in the face.”

His stunned expression made me pause, time enough to realize what an assumption I’d made. To imagine we’d even still be together that far into the future took an unjustifiable amount of nerve on my part. My stomach plunged. “I mean—”

He erupted with radiance. Over the years, I often saw his smiles transform his modest looks into something charming and appealing, but this blaze made him stunningly handsome. I couldn’t help but stare.

A glance at his mouth and I moved to the other side of my desk before I gave into temptation. His smile fell away. Much as I wanted to stand nearer to him, I hadn’t yet regained enough control to risk it.

Instead, I withdrew an envelope from a drawer and looked at him. I handed this private correspondence to the boy who was only fifteen, who was my responsibility, the boy whose opinion I respected as a peer’s and who, I now realised, I had resisted seeing as a man. Even at fifteen, he was more man than child. He had probably been born more man than child.

He read the letter and looked up at me. “You’ve been job-hunting.”

I sat on the edge of my desk and examined the worn taupe carpet at my feet. “Yes.”

“This is in London.”

I took a breath. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, I should have realised.”

I looked at him, my stomach flittering. “Realised what?” He was deducing, which usually entertained me, but always left me off-balance.

“I didn’t know how you felt. I mean, I hoped, I thought, I hoped you felt about me as I do about you, but I was intent on moving on with career plans, and I knew we needed some space between us before there could be any hope of us getting together.” That had to be the longest sentence I’d ever heard in his usually measured conversation. “I never considered how my leaving might affect you.”

I laughed. “To tell you the truth, neither had I.”

“Take the job. Go to London.”

I blinked. “What? No.”

He frowned. “Why not?”

“Because, because”—I waved a hand—“it’s not like I can just leave the school in the lurch like that with only two weeks’ notice. It would be disruptive to the boys, and the administration will need time to replace a housemaster. Anyway,” I said more quietly, “London isn’t Cambridge.”

“London is still the hub of British power and influence, and I’ll be making my way there as soon as I can. If you were already there,” he glanced away, “I’d work twice as hard. Until then, we could still see each other.” He paused and looked at me sideways. “I’m given to understand one can travel without a visa north of the Thames.” Neither of us native to Sussex, we shared a smile at his poke at an old southern chauvinism.

“Mycroft—”

He stared at me in wonder. “You’ve, you’ve never called me that before.”

I tilted my head. “Perhaps not to your face.”

“Oh.” His chest rose and fell as if I’d just blown life-breath into his lungs, and his eyes darkened. Then he tsked. “Why did you interview for a job if you never intended to take it?”

“Thought I’d see what was out there, brush up on my interviewing skills, rehearse for possible future options.” My laugh had nothing to do with amusement. “It never occurred to me that an offer might come out of it.”

“It should have.” Mycroft gave an entirely fifteen-year-old eye-roll. “Fine, give the school a term’s notice. But plan to move to London by the new year.”

I raised my eyebrows. This wasn’t the first time by a long shot that I’d witnessed the emergence of Holmes the Determined. “Don’t try to control my life.”

“If I wanted to control your life, you would know it." His brow wrinkled. "One moment, no, actually you wouldn't."

With any other fifteen-year-old, I'd be amused at the arrogant quirk of his chin, but with Mycroft, I hesitated. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't know, perhaps I’d have my father make a stink about my impeded application until the school had no choice but to let you go. Then what would you do?”

My scalp crawled. I’d fall back on the job offer currently in Mycroft’s hands. Of course I would. Basic game theory. “It might get me to London ahead of schedule, but I wouldn’t stay with the person who’d engineered my downfall.”

“Again, I say, you wouldn’t know.”

“Mycroft!”

“I’m telling you this precisely because I’d never do such a thing to you. But it’s out of respect, not out of inability.”

"I'd never think it was out of inability." I felt sorry for a world that was soon to have Mycroft Holmes unleashed on it. “I trust you’ll always use your power for good.”

“You’re my inspiration and you’ve taught me well.” His sincerity made me swallow. “I could never disappoint you.”

I wasn't sure that would survive the realities of life, but I still may have blushed and cleared my throat. “I won’t leave at Christmas.”

“Sir!” I looked at him and he broke eye contact with a small smile. “Greg. Please move to London.”

“The job wouldn’t stay open until the New Year. They’ll get someone else to fill the position.”

“I’m sure you’ll get another.” He raised his chin. “And if necessary I can help out with expenses until you’re settled.”

I shook my head. These wealthy private school kids might be raised to know the value of money, some of them, but not always the value of a man’s pride. “Want to keep me, do you?”

He paused, then glanced away, but not before casting me a look of intense longing. “Forever.”

I clenched my fists and stiffened my elbows to stop myself pulling him to me. “As long as you’re here, I’m staying.” Because this might be all I had.

Life with Holmes would never be boring, that was certain, but university changed people. They experienced a world much bigger than anything and everything they’d known to date, and they wanted to taste all that novelty. At thirty, I could imagine spending the rest of my days with Mycroft, but while he thought he could devote himself to me, he deserved the opportunity to spread his wings unhampered by an old man hanging about his neck like an albatross.

“Don’t think of this year as our last chance together,” he said. “I need you now and want you in my future.”

“You think you do—”

“Don’t abandon me.”

“Never.” I tugged him into my arms, at once flummoxed by his endless ability to read minds and intoxicated by the freedom to comfort him this way. “I’ll always be here for you as long as you need me, but—”

“Stop.” He buried himself against me. “Stop at ‘I’ll always be here for you’.”

He was still so young. “I’ll always be here for you.”

“Good.” I smiled into his hair. “Because we’re not going to be able to meet alone in your rooms again.”

I froze. “I know.”

He pulled his face away enough to look at me. “I was hoping you’d fight me on that.”

I sighed and cupped his cheek. “God knows I want to.” But he was still my pupil and I still owed him the safety of my fiduciary position over him. Now that the blinders had fallen from me, I wasn’t sure I could trust myself alone with him anymore.

“If we’re not going to do this again for awhile,” his blue-grey, clear-eyed stare made my heart race, “then before I go, would you … just once, would you at least—”

I crushed my lips to his, at first closed-mouthed so as not to overwhelm him, but within seconds he slipped into surrender, yielding to my mouth, to my invasion, capitulating to me like a vanquished warrior, even though I knew that, as young as he was, he could never be vanquished unless he wanted to be, and the fact that he let me in, that he welcomed me, it elated me, inflated me.

His gasps and his murmurs filled my mouth and he filled my senses as my fingers thrust up into his hair. It was only with the greatest reluctance that I started to pull back.

“Greg.” His arms tightened around me, begging for more, and I surged against him, helpless.

The dinner bell rang, and he whispered in my ear. “I don’t have to go.”

I had to break away before I completely lost control. “Go now, or I will never let you out of my rooms.” I basked in the incandescence of his smile.

He kissed me again. “I think, for me to go, you have to release me.”

I pulled my arms apart. “Sorry.” His smile was going to test me in the months to come.

“Don’t be.”

I walked him to my door, my hand sliding down his wrist until our fingers enmeshed in a tight grip. “Our distance, after so many years of bonding, will raise eyebrows, if not comments.”

He looked at me. “The debacle over my application could, under other circumstances, have led to irreconcilable differences.”

My eyes widened, then fell shut. “Don’t say that.” Fear at what I could have set off pounded in my throat.

“Really, what were you thinking?” There he went reversing our roles again, like he did so often, like he had been doing more and more over the last year.

“I don’t think I was.” I rubbed a thumb over my eyebrow. The concept of a future together beyond Seaville never entered my mind, so I couldn’t factor it in. “I just, for the little while longer I thought I had left, I just wanted to keep you.”

“You have me.” He pulled me into an embrace and my heart grew to fill my chest. “But as you see, I can’t keep my hands off you, so we’d better make use of the ready-made excuse for irredeemable anger at each other.”

Just the idea of it hurt. “I was so stupid.”

“You were only as desperate for a solution as I was.” He rested his temple against my cheek. “But to ease the burden on both of us, I’m going to request a transfer to another house for the remainder of this school year.”

“No.” I grasped his arms and focussed on blue-grey. “I deserve it, but—”

“You know that’s not why.”

My brow wrinkled and I closed my eyes. OK, his removal would lend authenticity to our distance. And with Siger Holmes an influential member of the school board, my exit at the end of the school year even without his recommendation would come as no surprise. A separation now would, in its own demented way, be perfect.

I looked at him, marveling how, in the space of half an hour, he’d gone from ward to beloved. From the moment I saw the chubby ten-year-old, I only wanted to protect him, and in the years since then, my regard for him had developed into a platonic love. Now, though, now … But sixteen was too soon; he needed time to make his way in the world, and so did I when I started over in London.

“I want you, Gregory Lestrade, and I always get what I want.”

He kissed me once more, with his mouth and with his eyes, he squared his shoulders, and he left. I watched him walk away, and then closed my door, leaning back against it blinking. He waved his hands, made the impossible possible, and I could have him. I could really have him. “But for how long?”

Time. What if I gave him up for a few short years? In many ways he was already fully formed, but in many others, he was just on the cusp of the stunning man that he could be. If I waited, let him grow into himself, how long could I keep him then?

Something clicked into place, and a memory rose unbidden.

“Forever.”


End file.
